The Church recently released a slightly updated list of questions for local leaders interviewing soon-to-be LDS missionaries. They track LDS temple recommend interview questions fairly closely, with a few slight modifications. For example, the prospective missionary is asked to bear their testimony. Rather than dig into the details, let’s instead take a step back and talk about LDS “worthiness interviews” in general. I have a few points to make, then an AI blurb to share, with a big surprise at the end.
First, since LDS missionaries officially represent the Church, and do so quite visibly, detailed interviews are more defensible than the more general LDS worthiness interviews. Most employers give fairly detailed interviews to job applicants, after all, and they screen for red flags that might cause the company problems down the line (criminal convictions, fired from previous job, can legally work in the country, etc.). Or take a look at the application process to become a Catholic priest: it includes a series of conversations and interviews, recommendations as to moral character from several people who know you, criminal background checks, and of course years of training and education.
Second, there is the issue of the latitude that local leaders conducting LDS worthiness interview are granted (or choose to exercise). In theory, LDS leaders are directed to stick to the list of questions that are given in the LDS Handbook. But when an issue arises in the course of the interview, leaders are of course allowed to get further details so as to counsel the member or, if necessary, consider some sort of action along the LDS disciplinary section. I think most LDS leaders follow this direction, and one of the reasons LDS worthiness interviews don’t cause *more* problems is that most LDS local leaders are fairly responsible.
But there are a few local leaders (5% 10%?) who are apparently comfortable asking additional questions with no basis for a “fishing expedition” other than their own intuition or gut feeling. That’s a problem, not just because you or I think that is out of bounds but also because the guidance they receive from senior LDS leaders (via the Handbook) is to NOT do that sort of thing. There just isn’t really any institutional mechanism to prevent rogue LDS local leaders from doing this, and precious little recourse for members on the receiving end of a fishing expedition.
Third, a related issue is that LDS leadership guidance tells local leaders they are “judges in Israel,” which seems to encourage them to do some digging so they can do some judging. Furthermore, leaders are told they have the power of discernment, kind of like Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings. In LDS lore, it’s a priesthood power (in LDS lore, just about everything is a priesthood power), but somehow it’s only bishops and stake presidents who are able to exercise this power. Except that is a very open question whether local leaders have any power of discernment beyond what you, me, or any other adult with some life experience is able to exercise via hunches or gut feelings, or how we are sometimes able to read people based on their words or actions (we can’t really read their mind, just make educated guesses in some situations). This LDS discernment theory, again, encourages some local leaders to follow hunches on a fishing expedition until they get a confession of wrongdoing.
Fourth, there is a doctrinal issue: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are all unprofitable servants, the Book of Mormon tells us in Mosiah. So we are all sinners. If you are trying to protect the temple from having sinners enter, then no one should be allowed in LDS temples. Or you can say, “hey, it’s just a building, anyone should be allowed to enter because anyone who enters should emerge somewhat edified and encouraged.” Or you can take the LDS approach, there are big sins and little sins, we let the little sinners in but keep the big sinners out. That’s a practical compromise, but it has its problems.
So I think there are three options for your position on LDS worthiness interviews: (1) they are pretty much okay the way they are, they serve some positive purpose for the members or for the Church, with possibly a little more accountability for local leaders who deviate from LDS guidance; (2) they should be dialed back to a few general questions, allowing local leaders to have a nice conversation and giving members the opportunity to raise any moral issues they have on their own, voluntarily; or (3) the whole concept of worthiness interviews is deeply flawed and cannot be reformed so they should be discontinued.
I think reasonable LDS people can disagree on those three choices. You can make pro and con arguments for all three of them. I doubt the Church is going to back away from or dial down worthiness interviews, but the discussion is still worthwhile.
So now let’s hear from the Google, specifically the AI summary that appears before links to the prompt “are lds worthiness interviews a good thing or a bad thing?” Here’s the “good thing” paragraph, which sound like it is lifted from an LDS publication:
LDS worthiness interviews, conducted by bishops or other church leaders, are a way for members to assess their spiritual well-being and commitment to living according to church standards. These interviews are seen by some as a helpful opportunity for self-reflection, repentance, and receiving spiritual guidance.
Now here are the possible “bad things” reported by AI:
However, there are also concerns regarding these interviews, particularly for youth. These concerns include:
- Potential for harm: Some believe that discussing intimate topics, especially those related to sexuality, with youth in a one-on-one setting can be inappropriate and potentially harmful.
- Lack of training: Critics argue that lay leaders, who conduct these interviews, may lack sufficient training in pastoral care, counseling, and addressing sensitive topics, which could lead to mishandling situations.
- Focus on worthiness: Some argue that emphasizing “worthiness” based on adherence to rules can negatively impact self-worth and create unhealthy boundaries.
- Concerns about child protection: The setting of one-on-one interviews raises concerns about potential for abuse and the power imbalance between the leader and the youth.
- Impact on mental health: Some individuals report negative experiences with these interviews, including feelings of shame, anxiety, and depression.
So there are some things to consider. Now here is the big surprise I had when reviewing this AI summary. It pulls information from any relevant source it can find on the Internet (apparently), and who knows how the algorithms select which sources are accurate enough to be quoted or summarized. Looking down their list of sources (on the right sidebar) what should appear but a W&T post! That’s right, the good work we do here at W&T is actually educating AI about the LDS Church! Hawkgrrrl’s 2019 post What’s the Point of Worthiness Interviews? is helping AI understand the topic and inform anyone who asks the Google.
So that’s my happy thought for the day. We know that all these posts, thousands of them by now, that we do here are W&T live on forever in the murky depths of Internet archives. But now we also know that the searching tentacles of AI seek out these prior posts and use them for their summaries. It’s like every post, most of which get read and discussed for maybe 48 hours, now have a second life with AI. Hawkgrrrl’s 2019 post was so good I’m going to close by reposting two paragraphs below that hit on some of the same points I wrote above:
A few years ago, a friend of mine and I had a difference of opinion. He was a former bishop. For obvious reasons, I am not. I affirmed that the purpose of the temple recommend interview was for people to self-determine their own worthiness and readiness. Evidence I cited included that the interviewer is prohibited from asking questions other than the yes/no questions on the approved list. It’s not supposed to be a fishing expedition. Plus, it ends with a self-affirmation of worthiness: “Do you consider yourself worthy…?” which sums up the interview as a personal declaration of worthiness.
He disagreed, stating that as a “judge in Israel,” he was responsible to ensure that no unclean thing entered the House of the Lord. I asked how he did that exactly, and he said through spiritual promptings during the interview. I clarified that he still only had the person’s answers to go on, and even if they were not being truthful, he would have no defensible basis to deny the recommend (other than his crime-busting stare and gut feeling suppositions). He said he would deny it anyway, even if he didn’t have a reason from their answers if he just didn’t feel right about it. I said that was kind of terrifying.
Wheat & Tares 
I now refuse to take part in a ‘worthiness’ interview. I don’t need a man to decide whether I am worthy (for anything). Of course it means I can’t go to the temple but I never ‘got’ the temple anyway.
I do think that there should NOT be temple recommend interviews. If someone is there who should not be, then God will sort it. Considering how many people lie in their interviews, the interviews are not assuring the purity of the temple anyway.
There should not be any worthiness interviews. People just lie anyhow and there is no special power of discernment. Mark Hoffman and John C. Bennett prove that the leaders don’t have the power of discernment either.
What’s on my mind this morning, after reading a post about worthiness, is the horrific conspiracy theory that Senator Mike Lee amplified on Father’s Day regarding the Minnesota shooter who murdered two parents and critically injured two lawmakers. This shooter was a MAGA-aligned Evangelical Christian with a hit list targeting Democrats and pro-choice advocates. It was clearly an act of political violence, yet Senator Lee chose to spread a blatant lie to score political points online.
Everyone should read what a top staffer for Senator Tina Smith wrote in response—an appropriate and powerful rebuke of his unconscionable comments:
https://x.com/burgessev/status/1934743736312807918/photo/1
Senator Lee is arguably the most prominent LDS figure in the world right now. Here we have a cardinal sin—murder—and he’s bearing false witness. Does anyone really believe he’ll lose his temple recommend over this?
To me, there’s no meaningful correlation between someone’s righteousness or Christlike character and their ability to pass a worthiness interview. In fact, I believe these interviews often encourage dishonesty—particularly around topics like pornography, masturbation, and sexual intimacy—because people want access to the temple and fear the shame of being excluded from major life events.
Worthiness interviews have become little more than a checklist. They can’t measure the “weightier matters of the law”—faith, hope, or charity. They don’t evaluate whether someone lives as the Good Samaritan. Someone can ace a worthiness interview and still support cruel policies like family separation at the border.
One of the reasons we chose not to raise our son in the Church is because we couldn’t protect him from the spiritual harm embedded in these interviews.
Worthiness interviews, like loyalty oaths, are performative. When one comes before one’s god the go to statement, quoting Wayne, “We are not worthy! We are not worthy!” When going before a man with no qualifications to act as a judge, the correct response is “none of your damn business.”
If we are honest, how many Bishops or Stake Presidents have we known over the years who, after all those interviews standing as a judge in Israel, left the church, or were excommunicated because they either quit believing or had an affair with one of the sisters in the ward? How many Bishops and Stake Presidents, after having both normal and creepy interviews, were eventually released to go back into the “normal” church population and were never held accountable for the damage they did to individuals? I was in a ward in AZ at the beginning of my career where a Bishop, also a local seminary teacher and graduate of BYU, excommunicated a woman in the ward for having a sexual indiscretion with a recently returned missionary. Of course, the RM was not even disfellowshipped. When she “served her time,” she went back to the Bishop to start the process of returning to the church. He wouldn’t meet with her during church, but waited until the evening when no one else was at the church. When they met, he broke down and cried to her about how much he was in love with her and had fantasized about her. He said he had confessed all this to his wife but….. Needless to say, it disrupted her process. The same bishop also gave a temple recommendation interview to a friend of mine and his wife. To him, he asked all the normal questions, and it was done. To his wife, though, he expanded the questions to include oral sex, different positions, garments, and how often they had sex. My friend was creeped out but didn’t know what to do, and his wife thought it was normal. I said the Bishop had a problem. But like so many things, Mormon people move on, and you never get the end of the story because we don’t really keep in touch. So, I have no idea what happened to the Bishop. The first lady eventually came back but then left on her own accord. My friend and his wife left Arizona and, I believe, lived happily ever after, eventually becoming a Trump supporter and remaining a strong member of the church.
Jacob L.
I’ve been infuriated about this very thing with Lee. You nailed it, and I’m afraid you are right about both his temple recommend and how the weightier matters aren’t important. Lee will be praised by many members of the church. Reading the comments in the Deseret News has already confirmed this. The only good thing is that there is also a lot of push back even there about his callous behavior. Now, if will will just vote and not be afraid of a Democrat.
“Worthiness” is another cloak for Institutional image management. When exactly did humans become unacceptable to the God we refer to as “Father”? What kind of Father are we promoting? Is that really the story of the human condition, that our mistakes, even grievous ones place us on a hierarchy of “worth” in Gods eyes? The temple recommend questions are about loyalty to the institution, they are gatekeeping inquiries to measure if the church believes you will support and protect their brand. As much as the concept of growth and development has been preached from the pulpit, Church policies and practices support this life being a summative test rather than a formative one.
I fear that if Jesus showed up today, we, and by we, I mean LDS church leadership would be echoing the same question which plagued his own Jewish people; “Why do you eat with sinners”?
Would we also miss the Jesus of the New Testament for the same reasons we routinely accuse them of missing him, namely, he hung out with people the temple recommend deems “unworthy”. Would we also cast out Jesus as a heretic and one too sympathetic to the sinners? I fear our “Red chair” sitting LDS leadership would also see Jesus as a threat to the status quo. I mean, for heaven’s sake, what is their reaction to people advocating for LBGTQ and women’s rights and historical and financial transparency? Excommunication is the reward waiting for those who make a public stand against the powers that be. Sounds familiar.
Everyone should read Ed Kimball’s “History of LDS Temple Admission Standards” published in the 1990s. The process and questions have changed so much and so sigificantly over the last 150 years as to make everything about the process seem like the arbitrary ideas of whoever is running the church at a given moment. I’m not opposed in principle to some kind of interview process for going on missions and entry into the temple, but I’m convinced we have it completely wrong. Unfortunately, I also struggle to come up with exactly what it should look like. I have ideas of a few very open-ended questions to be asked by a bishop who is a wise and experienced spiritual advisor, but who are we kidding? We’re relying on part-time volunteers who have a family and a day job and next to no training, and we’re operating on a franchise model where things must be spelled out in excruciating detail in hopes of minimizing some of the horror stories that happen on occasion. In that world, I’d just say, fine, maybe we need a checklist of sorts, but it should be short. I don’t like the belief questions in particular for the temple recommend. They are inherently problematic because those who are going through a proces of questioning should not feel like they are suddenly unwelcome in the temple. Some notion of assessing level of belief seems reasonable for missionaries because we don’t want them going solely out of social pressure, but we need to be mindful of the fact that anyone feeling enough social pressure can “bear testimony” on command.
As a bishop, I despised the worthiness interview process. I quickly learned how to encourage the interviewee to control the narrative. That approach made the exercise much less authoritarian.
With that in mind, I strongly support Dave B’s option 2: “They should be dialed back to a few general questions, allowing local leaders to have a nice conversation and giving members the opportunity to raise any moral issues they have on their own, voluntarily”.
Also, all youth interviews should require either a parent or legal guardian be present. Sam Young had it right.
End all worthiness interviews. I honestly see nothing good coming of these.
That said I’m not opposed to the bishopric meeting with the youth regularly, although not one-on-one to get to know them and help their personal growth.
Dave B: Wow, I am surprised that AI is using my post as a source! Funny thing is that while I was reading your post, I kept thinking about that conversation with my friend (that you quoted above). When he and I were friends, he was a former bishop, and since then he has also been a mission president. I would add a few more thoughts to that conversation now:
1) to my point, worthiness interviews are similar to tithing declarations. You declare, but it’s not an audit, and the instruction is that bishops don’t dig into the details. They just ask you to declare. If you donate directly to COB online, the bishop can’t even see what you donated.
2) to my friend’s point, the worthiness interview is kind of like a routine/forced confession. We don’t normally have spontaneous confessions like in the Catholic Church. There’s no anonymous confessional set up with a screen between us and whatever priest is on shift. The worthiness interview kind of forces that process to happen once every two years (or so it’s supposed to work). So maybe the Church does want a fishing expedition by the mere fact that they routinize these interviews to happen regularly. If you don’t schedule it, they try to do so proactively.
And I have to reiterate again (and as others have) that my friend’s belief in his ability to discern what was in another soul’s is some serious hubris. There are good reasons people look guilty who are innocent: anxiety, dislike for the bishop, domestic violence issues in the home, a history of trauma, they have IBS or period cramps. Misinterpreting someone’s sweaty brow as guilt when it’s really gastro-intestinal distress is in fact a very real possibility. You might literally be deemed unworthy for politely, yet with difficulty, suppressing a fart.
I’m pleased to see that Hawkgrrrl’s 2019 post has been referenced. (She’s a friend and we talk, and she reviewed my book.) I think the 2019 date is important. Last time I looked my Living on the Inside of the Edge, with close to two full chapters on this topic, had not been scooped up in any LLM development. But the book was published in 2023 and that seems to be too recent for AI. [I’m intentionally side-stepping copyright issues for the moment.]
The point is that I’ve had my say, at length, and don’t need to play it out here.
But I thought I’d throw out my response to Quentin’s question, which has been asked of me several times already. That is,
If not the current worthiness system, what would you put in its place?
My answer is to build a replacement system around a readiness or preparedness concept. In short form:
>Do you know what you’re doing? (Reasonable expectations. Practical, emotional, physical, mental, spiritual requirements.)
>Are you ready? (Education, experience, preparation.)
. . . and slightly on the negative or testing side: Are your intentions honorable? Are you doing this for good healthy reasons?
This is exactly what happened to a good friend of mine. She answered all the questions with faithful answers and qualified for a recommend. Instead, the bishop told her he just didn’t “feel” like she was worthy! (Maybe because of her recent divorce?)
That was the end for her.
One of my biggest concerns about interviews and teachings, is that girls & women in particular, often never learn how to set boundaries, and say no or none of your business- in interviews or to any inappropriate behavior!
If the interview is for an annual or semi-annual meeting with youth, it must not be called a worthiness interview — it is not intended to be a worthiness interview — rather, it is an opportunity for a bishop to get to know a youth a little better. The current handbook calls them Meeting with Youth (31.3.1). I wish bishops would read the instructions for meetings with youth, and then follow those instructions. A bishop errs if he calls a youth in for an annual meeting and then turns it into a worthiness interview in an attempt to extract a confession — that is wholly wrong, and should never happen.
I hope bishops will read the instructions for meetings with youth, and then follow those instructions.
At church this week I’m teaching a lesson based on Sister Runia’s talk. A big part of this lesson will be focused on Sister Runia stating that “your worth is not based on your obedience.” A question I am posing is: “Why does she even need to say this? And why was this statement so impactful to people when she did state it?”
I think that one of the reasons she needed to clearly state it is because we call our temple recommend interviews “Worthiness interviews” and as ji stated, sometimes we call bishops meeting with youth “Worthiness interviews”. How are they not going to get the idea that their worth is based on how well they can answer the questions in those interviews. It needs to stop.
A baby step in the right direction would be stop calling them worthiness interviews- and before each interview to review Sister Runia’s talk, and clearly state “Your worth doesn’t change. God’s love for you is unconditional, and you always have infinite worth”.
As a sidebar to this conversation, I for one am grateful that Christian Kimball’s book has not yet been “scraped”/plundered by chatbots, and lament that Hawkgrrrl’s 2019 post already has. LLMs are plagiarism machines that notoriously hallucinate, have no mechanism to distinguish accurate information from inaccurate, quickly create and spread misinformation and disinformation (which is very clearly a feature, not a bug, at this point), and is actively contributing to the dumbing down of human discourse—which I didn’t think was possible in the social media era, but here we are. “AI” is not actually intelligent, and much like asbestos, I suspect we will still be scraping away the toxic infestation of LLMs from the infrastructure of the internet for decades to come.
Seriously, I visit blogs like these because I want to hear what actual human beings have to say on these topics; reading “AI” summaries has all the charm of listening to an automated phone menu while trying to reach a customer service representative. If we’re just going to let LLMs do our research and thinking for us, then just pack it in and give in to “dead internet” theory, because there’s no reason for us to be here anymore.
@JB
I’m actually very pleased with the productivity gains I’m seeing AI make with front-line staff in my organization. There are plenty of employees who simply aren’t strong writers, and I don’t feel comfortable having them write directly to customers due to the many mistakes they tend to make. Instead, I have them draft their own messages and then run them through AI to clean up grammar, punctuation, and general wording. It works well and seems to create a nice synthesis of their content and what amounts to a spellchecker on steroids. Granted, it does seem to create a rather blah output in many situations. I’m much more optimistic about AI, but the caveat will be in how it is used and whether it serves as a force multiplier or a crutch.
The comment about Sister Runia’s talk reminded me of another General Conference talk which, thanks to Google, I was able to identify. Joy D. Jones (then General Primary President), “Value Beyond Measure,” September 2017 (General Women’s Broadcast):
“Let me point out the need to differentiate between two critical words: worth and worthiness. They are not the same. Spiritual worth means to value ourselves the way Heavenly Father values us, not as the world values us. Our worth was determined before we ever came to this earth. ‘God’s love is infinite and it will endure forever.’
“On the other hand, worthiness is achieved through obedience. If we sin, we are less worthy, but we are never worth less! We continue to repent and strive to be like Jesus with our worth intact. As President Brigham Young taught: ‘The least, the most inferior spirit now upon the earth … is worth worlds.’ No matter what, we always have worth in the eyes of our Heavenly Father.”
Could it be that members don’t internalize this because these talks are by women?
Someone on a reddit post suggested that we confuse the words in English because they sound so similar. Out of curiosity I looked them up in French and while “valeur” is given as the translation for both, “worthiness” also has “merite” and “caracter digne.” Spanish gives “valor” for “worth” and “merito” for “worthiness.”
+1 to JB’s comments about AI. It has its uses, but too often it’s like asking the most gullible person you know to give a summary of a situation.
The reason Runia and Jones’ messages about value being tied to obedience/”worthiness” doesn’t stick is because they give these talks in GC, and then we spend the other 364 days of the year demonstrating that we collectively don’t believe it. We put those without temple recommends into the unimportant and out of the way callings. We go to the pulpit and say how wonderfully righteous the bishop or SP is. (Or how wonderfully righteous their wives are.) We enact policies that trans people can’t teach a primary class because they’re too icky. In 100 ways we show over and over again that performative righteousness is what we value, and then we sit in a lesson every once in a while and nod along when someone reads the quote that we all have the same intrinsic infinite worth.
In the secular world (such as for employment), interviews are not used to determine qualifications or filter red flags. That’s what objective vetting processes and background checks are for. The interview portion is mainly for determining whether or not the applicant has a personality that will mesh well with the organization’s culture, as well as for clarifying expectations and answering an applicant’s questions. Of all the secular interviews I’ve participated in, the most pleasant, productive ones were like friendly conversations, in which I felt like I was a peer to the interviewer. And I’ve been in interviews that felt like interrogations (most Church interviews are like this) and others in which the interviewer takes up most of the time talking about themself or their company, or trying awkwardly to defend their company’s high turnover rate (yes, that happened once). One of the most telling signs is whether the interviewer sits behind a desk, or sits in front of or beside the applicant with no furniture in between. The latter is inviting and collaborative, while the former is an attempt to project power and dominance. Sadly, most LDS bishops I’ve known conduct interviews from behind a desk, which I think is cowardly.
Perhaps we should conduct pre-missionary interviews in a more constructive, collaborative way, with a goal toward ascertaining the applicant’s sincerity and motivation to serve, and potentially screen out applicants who lack commitment, or wish to serve for selfish reasons. If the missionary program were better organized, leaders could use this interview to redirect certain applicants toward non-proselytizing options if that might be a better personality match. In any case, diving into the applicant’s sexual history, marital prospects, or similar lines of questioning should never be permitted. And I think asking the applicant to bear testimony is manipulative and performative, and should also not be allowed.
I don’t know if this is standard Church-wide, but I’ve heard of bishops and stake presidents asking missionary applicants to list and re-confess all prior serious sins, including those that were previously resolved with priesthood leaders. This happened to me back in the early 2000s, and even as a TBM at the time it was a shock to find out that sometimes Christ’s atonement doesn’t always “count” for everyone.
Generally, I am in agreement with many of you that LDS worthiness interviews as presently constituted are largely unnecessary, and very problematic.
NYAnn – While I agree with the sentiment of Sister Runia’s talk, the strained effort to distinguish the words “worth” and “worthiness” just supports current church policy without having to ask for any real change.
The suffix “-ness” is used to create nouns that describe the quality, state, or condition of an adjective. It transforms adjectives like “kind” into nouns like “kindness,” denoting the quality of being kind. So, when you add “ness” onto “worth”, it does not change the definition of the word, but rather its part of speech. It changes and adjective into a noun, worthiness becomes the quality of having worth. That’s not different. The problem isn’t a misunderstanding; it’s a blatant use of shame to govern behavior. As said above, change it to preparation or well-being, but drop the value proposition. I agree that there are ways of living that do not support human flourishing, but that is a personal and relational problem, not an image problem.
toddsmithson
I agree. It’s like Elder Soares’ attempt to change the word preside to a word that means equality. Preside and worthy already have meanings, and one or two talks (particularly by women) will not change the way most people experience the meaning of those words.
So change the wording. Refer to preparedness interviews. And if you want women to know they are equal, stop presiding over all women and include women in the partnership of presiding over the church and remove it from the sealing ordinance.
It feels icky and gas lighty to an extent when leaders try to change the meaning of things like this retroactively. While I appreciate their general effort, it doesn’t fix the problem in the end.
One problem that comes out of worthiness interviews is that many leaders/members believe that passing the worthiness interview is a guaranteed one-way ticket to the highest level of the celestial kingdom. I can’t count the number of times over the years hearing something from the pulpit along the lines of, “If you honestly answered all the questions in your temple recommend interview, then you will go to the celestial kingdom.” It’s not hard to understand where this mentality comes from. After all, if you’re “worthy” to enter “the Lord’s House”, then you must also be worth to go to the higest level of the celestial kingdom, right? What hubris, especially when you think about what questions are currently asked in temple recomment interviews. The current interview is essentially a loyalty test to the Institutional Church more than a test of one’s desire to develop Christlike qualities. I suspect a lot of Mormons are going to be surprised at how little their lieflong “temple worthiness” means to God at Judgement Day.
Just consider this: each and every person that was involved in the lying, illegal, deceitful, dishonest, and disgusting SEC Church scandal, had a temple recommend. They were “worthy”. I have taken a pass on the interview since then. It means less than nothing to God.